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Presentation of the Lloret Night Trail, Lloret de Mar’s night-time trail race

Today, in the Parc de les Olors in Lloret de Mar, the presentation of the Lloret Night Trail, the event to be held on Saturday 1 July, now in its eighth year, took place. The Lloret Night Trail is a night-time race that runs along the best sections of the coastal path and through the woods of Lloret, finishes on the beach with a spectacular finish line surrounded by torches, and offers a choice of two distances, 7 and 14 kilometres.

The Lloret Night Trail, organised by the City Council in collaboration with the Lloret-La Selva Athletics Club and La Sansi, is expected to have more than 500 participants, with the race featuring a surprising route of great attraction and natural value.

The start of the Lloret Night Trail will take place at 9.30pm in front of the tourist office on Avinguda de les Alegries and will run through the wooded area of the town, finishing on Lloret beach.

Registration fees are €12 for the 7 km option and €16 for the 14 km option. In addition, all participants will receive a runner’s bag with various gifts and a headband.

For more information on the race, routes and registration, please visit: www.nighttraillloret.com

Lloret de Mar hosts the International IN’23 Football Tournament with over 1,500 participants

The fifth edition of the Futbol IN international 7-a-side football tournament will be held this weekend (26th, 27th and 28th May) in the towns of Lloret de Mar, Blanes and Vidreres. With 120 teams and 1,500 participants, including 1,200 players, 250 coaches and 3,000 accompanying persons, who will play on 7 different fields, the Futbol IN tournament is becoming a benchmark in the area.

The Futbol IN tournament consists of 8 groups of 5 teams, each headed by a professional grassroots youth team, ensuring the experience of playing against a top-level team for all participating regional teams.

The pre-benjamin IN8 category will take place in Vidreres and Blanes (Vidreres Municipal Stadium and Pedro Alía Municipal Stadium), the benjamin IN10 category in Blanes (Sports City and Can Borrell) and the alevin IN12 category in Lloret de Mar (Municipal Stadium and Athletics Track).

The competition will start on Saturday morning with the group phase all day long. On Sunday morning, the final phases will begin in all the towns. In the afternoon, the semi-finals and finals of all categories will be held at the Lloret de Mar Municipal Stadium, concluding with the presentation of trophies.

Most of the participants and accompanying persons will spend the night in Lloret de Mar over the weekend, and around 5,000 people are expected to pass through the football fields.

The Gran Fondo Lloret Costa Brava and the Lloret Trail will bring more than 1,600 athletes to Lloret de Mar next Sunday

If last week Lloret de Mar‘s sports facilities were at full capacity, with more than 13,000 sportspeople taking part in various tournaments and sporting events in football, basketball, handball and athletics, this weekend Lloret de Mar becomes the epicentre of outdoor sports tourism with two events that highlight the natural environment and combine the destination’s sea and mountain landscapes: the Gran Fondo Lloret Costa Brava and the Lloret Trail.

The fifth edition of the Gran Fondo Lloret Costa Brava cyclotourism race is back on Sunday 16 April with 800 participants. This year there has been an increase in international and non-Catalan participants, with 14% of the total number of international participants (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium) and 17% from outside Catalonia (especially Valencia and Zaragoza). The race offers two circular routes and two distances that adapt to different levels of cyclists: a 90 km distance that will start and return to Lloret passing through Llagostera, Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Tossa, returning along the main road of the area, with a cumulative drop of 1.400 m; and the grand fondo of 160 km, with a much more demanding route, which will pass through Alt de Grau, Llagostera, Els Àngels, Coll de la Ganga, Calonge, Romanyà de la Selva, Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Mas Carbotí with a cumulative height gain of more than 2,700 m. The start, finish and post-race services will be located on Passeig Jacint Verdaguer in Lloret de Mar.

On the same day, trail runners will be able to enjoy a new edition of the Lloret Trail, which has more than 700 entries from over 12 different nationalities, will also offer two routes (16 and 7 kilometres) and will be the Spanish championship in different categories. The race will have two starts: in the 16 km race, one for federated participants in the Spanish Championship of Mountain Running-Trail Running Absolut, U-23 and Master up to M65 and another drawer for the rest of the participants of this distance and, as for the 7 km race, one start for federated participants in the Championship of Mountain Running and Promotion U-20, U-18 and Master +70, and the popular open. In addition, the International Petanque Tournament is also taking place in Lloret these days, with over 400 participants from France and Belgium who remain faithful to the destination year after year.

The Mayor of Lloret, Albert Robert, stresses that “one of the strategies that we have promoted in recent years in the field of sports tourism is our commitment to events in the natural environment that allow us to showcase our potential in sporting activities such as cycling and running, with very good participation figures”.

The town currently has 17 specialised cycling accommodations and 11 recommended road cycling routes and 6 mountain bike routes, which can be consulted on the specific website www.lloretcycling.com, on platforms such as Wikiloc and Strava, on printed maps available at the tourist offices or on the interactive map platform: maps.lloretdemar.org.

More than 13,000 sportspeople will use Lloret de Mar’s sports facilities over Easter

Lloret de Mar‘s sports facilities are at full capacity over the Easter holidays. More than 13,000 sportspeople and their companions are in town to take part in and enjoy various events such as the MIC Football international grassroots football tournament with 5,800 people, including sportspeople, organisers and companions staying at different hotels in the town; the Sant Jaume football tournament with 1,980 participants; the Lloret Cup Handball tournament with 1,780 participants; and the Globasket tournament with 1,500 participants. Also noteworthy is the large number of sports stays, a total of 62, mainly in football and athletics, with a total of 1,950 people from international markets such as the Nordic countries, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Israel in the case of football stays, and Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, France, Iceland, Belgium and Sweden in the case of athletics stays.

For Ana Garcia Castany “These Easter figures show the full recovery of sports tourism that we have already seen at the beginning of the year”. In the first quarter of 2023, Lloret de Mar’s municipal sports facilities received 70% more international sportspeople than in the same period in 2022 and 9% more than in 2019. In total, from January to March, 6,029 athletes have passed through the sports facilities.

Today Lloret Turisme also organised the sports tourism round table, made up of the tourism promotion body and the various certified and affiliated private members, to present the 2023 action plan and the 2022 report. As for last year’s figures, 65,000 people (35,043 sportspeople and 30,106 accompanying persons) passed through the sports facilities, an increase of 6.4% compared to 2019, and Lloret de Mar hosted 323 activities. The high impact of sporting events also stands out, with 36,040 people attending, 55% of the total number of sports tourists.

The peak months were April (7,024 sportspeople) and June (7,003 sportspeople), with football, athletics, swimming, triathlon, cycling and basketball training camps being the most popular. France, Catalonia, Norway and Sweden are the most popular markets, although as Elizabeth Keegan, manager of Lloret Turisme, explains, “the nationalities also depend on the type of sport they normally practise, due to the sporting tradition of each of the countries of origin”. In this sense, for example, in the case of athletics, France stands out, followed by Catalonia and Germany; in the case of football, Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway and Switzerland; for swimming, France, Norway and Germany; for triathlon, France; and for cycling, France, Belgium, Holland and Poland. In terms of the type of competition, sporting events account for 76% of the total number of sporting activities held in Lloret de Mar, followed by private tournaments with 15%.

In 2023 Lloret Turisme continues to focus on sports tourism and cycle tourism, with a presence at specialised European trade fairs such as Fahrrad&Wandereisen, the Copenhagen Bike Show and Sea Otter, as well as collaboration and logistical support for strategic sporting events and sports tour operators. As Elizabeth Keegan explains, “the combination of strategic public-private partnerships is one of our key strengths. For example, this spring TUI Sports is launching an operation in Lloret that will bring different sports groups to practice road cycling and paddle tennis both now and in the autumn, and we have closed a full sports calendar with different top-level events in modalities such as trail, cycling, handball, basketball and football”. There will also be collaborations with content creators, famtrips with different French federations through the sports media sport.fr and the design of swimming and triathlon publications.

Since 2006, Lloret de Mar has been certified as a Sports Tourism Destination for football, athletics, cycling, swimming, team sports and triathlon. The municipality currently has 12 accommodation companies and 2 incoming agencies certified in sports tourism by the Catalan Tourism Agency, as well as 17 establishments and 2 incoming agencies certified in cycle tourism.

The MICE and sports tourism segments are the focus of promotional activity in Lloret de Mar these days

This week Lloret Turisme and the Lloret Convention Bureau are taking part in various promotional activities linked to meetings and events tourism and sports tourism, two segments that, in the words of Elizabeth Keegan, “complement each other perfectly and form part of Lloret de Mar’s strategy to diversify its tourism products in order to deseasonalize and extend the season”.

From yesterday until 23 March, Lloret Turisme is taking part in the Sports&Events workshop, an international meeting in the field of sports tourism held in Valencia and organised by the Eventoplus Group, FC Sports Experiences (UK) and Sport&Tourism Consulting. The three-day programme aims to bring together suppliers and buyers in the field of international sports tourism. Other companies from L’Azure Hotel and Evenia Travel Services are also taking part. Also this week, on 25 and 26 March, Lloret Turisme is taking part in another trade fair linked to sports tourism, in this case cycling, the Copenhagen Bike Show. Lloret de Mar has 17 establishments and 2 incoming agencies specialising in cycling and a website that brings together the entire offer and routes: www.lloretcycling.com. This week we also received a visit from the German TTOO DFT Sports, who visited all the town’s sports facilities.

In terms of meetings and events tourism, with the recovery of international markets, the Lloret Convention Bureau is committed to various promotional activities at European level in 2023. It recently organised a webinar for different event organising agencies from the Nordic countries in conjunction with the L’Azure hotel, Evenia Hotels, the Santa Marta hotel, the Rigat Park hotel and the Delamar hotel. This action will be complemented by the Lloret Convention Bureau’s participation in the WS Max Day in Stockholm, which will be held in mid-June and will be attended by around fifteen Swedish event organising agencies. At the same time, the trip to Northern Europe will be used to make a series of commercial visits to Oslo with the aim of consolidating Lloret de Mar‘s presence in the Scandinavian market. Furthermore, this weekend the destination hosted a familiarisation trip linked to the “Break the Ice Forum” promotional action organised by the Costa Brava Convention Bureau with 17 organising agencies from the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy, among others.

This week the Lloret Convention Bureau is on a promotional tour of the French market, presenting Lloret de Mar from 21 to 23 March in the cities of Lyon, Marseille and Montpellier, as well as to some thirty event agencies. Evenia Hotels, Hotel L’Azure, Hotel Santa Marta, Hotel Rigat Park and Hotel Sant Pere del Bosc also took part. In the words of the Director of the Lloret Convention Bureau, Montse Belisario, “the French market continues to be one of the strategic markets, along with the domestic and Scandinavian markets, as well as the traditional European markets. Lloret de Mar’s proximity to the French border, its connectivity by plane or train, the destination’s tourist tradition and the wide range of specialised services available are very attractive to this target audience. In addition, actions such as these showcase the good working relationship between the public and private sectors”.